Money Making Updates

Firstly, I wasn't being serious in yesterday's post, as some people thought, more satirical than anything.

Anyway, a few updates on things I haven't mentioned in my Money Making Weekly Reports:

daytipper
At last. My tip has been published and I have earned the grand sum of $3. But what a wait. My tip was approved for publishing on the 14th. of January and then went into a queue. If you are thinking of making money with daytipper be patient - be very patient!

From what I can see it took 107 days for my tip to be published and during this period 975 tips in total were published (and therefore got paid). This works out at about only 9 tips a day being monetised. Present figures show that 1611 tips have been published to date. Nothing wrong with the website but it's not something for serious money making.

Helium
As well as the normal commission Helium have now introduced weekly prizes ranging from $5 to $300. Write the best articles and you could win a prize on top of the normal payments.

I keep saying to myself that I must write more articles for them but somehow I don't get round to it. I quite like Helium though, it's got a nice 'feel' about the website.

Treasure Trooper
This really is a dead loss unless you live in the USA. I carried out one offer for payment in January but it has just disappeared from my earnings. No idea why. This is despite the fact that the website concerned bombards me with junk emails several times a week. It's probably all okay for USA residents but elsewhere it's a bit dodgy.

I have actually now made 25 cents! This has come from referring other members, problem is the full details can't be seen anywhere.

review me
I joined this way back on January 15th but have never had a sponsored post to complete for them. Seems a favoured few do get offers and make some decent money but nothing has come my way as yet. So I'll do one of their text ads: Get Reviewed by this blog for $60 at ReviewMe! Well you never know.

Wealth Toolbox
I know I said I wouldn't mention this again but I've come across one of their videos which you should be able to see here. There's a bit of chat first and then a video of a forex screen. The idea behind this is to get people to join Jason Steele's course - he's the Wealth Toolbox founder. My opinion is the same: don't touch this with a bargepole - read here.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Should Bloggers Become Their Own Advertising Agents?

I'm not a big fan of sponsored posts as I think they can overpower a blog. However, in saying this, I have completed four such posts for PayPerPost in the past and everything went okay. I got paid via PayPal exactly on time and I don't think that the posts detracted in any way from the blog.

I am now having difficulty, though, finding suitable offers to take up with PayPerPost. My last sponsored post was over a month ago. Perhaps I'm just being too fussy but I feel that any sponsored post has to be relevant to the blog concerned. Though this is a money making blog I still wouldn't write on any old subject purely for the cash.

I'm also a member of Review Me, I joined on the 15th of January, but this has been a dead loss to date. I haven't received any offers from them. I have now tried placing their 'Get Reviewed By This Blog For $60' button in the side column to see if this might entice an advertiser to part with some money.

As I wouldn't mind doing the occasional sponsored post I have joined a couple of other such programs today. I'll give details, and report on them, later once they have approved my blog.

Sometimes I think that perhaps we bloggers should become our own 'agents' for advertising, sponsored posts, links and so on. Who knows, perhaps it would become more profitable than through the normal routes of AdSense and other third parties who are obviously taking a big slice of the profits. ReviewMe, for example, take 50% of any money made. That does seem a hefty chunk - must be nearly as profitable as being an estate agent in the UK! Food for thought.

That's me for today. It's time to get some sunshine before it sinks out of sight. A walk along the cliffs sounds fine.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading
Build Blog Traffic By Other Bloggers Reviewing Your Posts!


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Make Money With Free Blogs - Part 3

Part 1
We talked mainly about Blog Content and retaining visitors with a few extras thrown in.

Part 2
The primary subject was about getting visitors to your blog.

So far, therefore, we have the formula:

Post content of value > Attract visitors > Keep visitors on your blog > Make them want to return

Now it’s time to actually Make Money and Monetise your Blog.

So where do you start? The most popular ways are:

1. Affiliate Programs
2. Shops
3. Advertisements
4. Sponsored Posts
5. Tips
6. Own products

Lets look at these in a little more detail:

1. Affiliate Programs.
There are a host of affiliate programs whereby a blogger can earn money by promoting all sorts of products and services. Payment for doing this is usually as (a) a percentage of the sale, (b) a flat fee or (c) per click. Affiliate schemes vary in the ways by which you can make money.

It all sounds very easy. You simply put their ads or information on your blog, maybe mention them on forums and do whatever else you can think of to get some clicks and/or sales.

There are hundreds and hundreds of websites wanting affiliates. The problem can sometimes be as to where to actually start looking. One solution is to join the likes of Commission Junction, TradeDoubler or ClickBank who are each associated with hundreds of affiliate programs.

You pick out the programs that interest you and any commissions you make will be paid via CJ, TradeDoubler or ClickBank. This cuts out dealing with lots of different individual affiliate schemes.

Affiliate programs are successful because your visitors are already interested in the subject matter (otherwise he or she would not be browsing your blog) and so will be drawn to the products shown. This is, of course, providing that you match the affiliate programs you join with the subject matter of your blog.

For lists of individual affiliate programs, in categories, try: AffiliateGuide or Affiliate Scout or do a Search.

As you will have seen from my Money Making Weekly Reports I have made money with the likes of the FriendFinderGroup and with Personal Ads. I also did well with Commission Junction initially.

Affiliate marketing gets you your share of the multi-million eCommerce business without any risk or cost. How else could you get associated with, and make money from, such big names as Amazon, eBay and many, many other big brand names. Once you start looking you may well be surprised at some of the famous company names that may want you as an affiliate.

There is one aspect of affiliate marketing that many bloggers overlook. This is that you can sometimes also refer others to the program and, in doing so, make money on the sales that these introductions achieve. The commission isn't huge, normally 5% or 10%, but it all adds up, especially if you can refer several people.

Other reading:
Money Making Test: Friend Finder Group
Money Making With Personal Ads

2. Shops.
Do you fancy having you own shop or store on the Internet and all for free? All you need to do is to get visitors to your shop - perhaps by promoting this on your blog. It is all easier said than done - getting the traffic, that is - but it can be achieved.

Setting up a shop is quite straightforward and is really simply an extension of being an affiliate. The companies concerned, who offer the service, do virtually everything for you. There is no need to have any knowledge of HTML as the website layouts, for your shop, are all ready set up.

You normally have a choice of goods with which to stock your shop. Again this is all for free and costs nothing to set up.

A few companies who offer to set you up with a free shop or store include:
Amazon: with their aStore.
Zlio: big range of products.
SexToySex: adult products (over 18’s only).
cafepress: t-shirts, posters, mugs, bumper stickers
eCrater: all sorts of products.
DIY Dating: worldwide dating

The above are purely examples. There are dozens of other places that will set you up with a free shop - seek and you will find! One point I would add is that you will find some websites who may request payment for setting up a shop. Personally I wouldn't go down this route unless (a) you have good recommendations that this is a genuine offer and (b) you are sure you can produce sufficient traffic to make it viable. Before parting with any money get experience with the freebie shops.

3. Advertisements
Unless you have been blogging blindfolded you will have seen adverts in various formats on blogs. The most seen are probably Google AdSense whereby bloggers are paid varying amounts per click. The only slight drawback, for the smaller blogger, is that it is necessary to accumulate $100 of earnings before you actually receive payment.

I suggest that prior to adding AdSense on your blog you read the Terms & Conditions and also their Progam Policies. Don’t ignore these otherwise any earnings accrued might be in jeopardy. You must not, for instance, use Hit Exchanges such as Blog Explosion, Blog Mad etc. to drive traffic to your blog.

Obey the rules and also read up on Optimization Tips to get the best return out of your ads. The diagram shows, what AdSense considers to be, the best placement for your ads - the darker the colour the better the position - in theory anyway. There’s loads of info on their website to help you make AdSense a success.

There are also numerous other places that will set you up with ads on your blog.

Other sites that will help you make money from adspace include:
AdBrite
Oxado
Bidvertiser
Clicksor
ExoClick

Note: If you are thinking of using other advertising alongside AdSense, on your blog, make sure that this is compatible with their rules. For example AdSense write: 'We do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site.'

4. Sponsored Posts
Once your blog is established you can make money by writing sponsored posts. For doing this you get paid a fee for writing the post, on a set topic, and publishing this on your blog. The post must normally remain on your blog for at least 30 days - though terms vary.

Websites offering money for writing sponsored posts include:
PayPerPost (which I have used)
Blogitive
Review Me
LoudLaunch

I have found PayPerPost to be easy to use and they have always paid me on time to date.


Other reading:
Build Traffic By Other Bloggers Reviewing Your Posts!

5. Donations & Tips
Yes, it is possible that, if you provide some interesting information, visitors to your blog may leave you a donation or tip.

There is one famous example of this - Jason Kottke. The story goes that in the early part of 2005 he decided to quit his employment to take up being a professional blogger for one year.

His blog doesn't offer any form of service or product, and there is no advertising on the blog. His income, I'm told, is purely from donations. In February of 2006 Jason revealed that roughly 1450 micropatrons had donated over US$39,900 over the course of his one year experiment.

This is an exceptional example. Jason was already a well established blogger prior to requesting donations. However even a few tips might just come in handy. You don’t get if you don’t ask.

PayPal offer proper donation buttons and make it easy for visitors to donate or leave a tip. I always run a couple of these buttons on my own blog.

6. Your Own Products
Now this is something I haven’t done myself as yet. I feel you need to be reasonably established and with good traffic before venturing down this path. It is, however, the method used by many big hitters.

Products such as eZines and information are probably the easiest route. Whatever you sell, providing your products match your visitors profile, you could be on to a winner.

With cafepress you can have your own range of t-shirts, posters, mugs and bumper stickers and they do all of the work.

Own products could be the future for bloggers.

That is Part 3 completed. So we have now added to our formula:

Post content of value > Attract visitors > Keep visitors on your blog > Make them want to return> Monetise your blog ...

The circle is complete but it never ends because, once you Monetise your blog, you are back to > Posting content of value ... and so on.

Good luck,
Mike.

Go to:
Make Money With Free Blogs Part 1
Make Money With Free Blogs Part 2


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Interesting And Useful Blog Posts - 2

This is the second time I have listed a few posts that have interested me on other blogs. I got a positive response from the first one and, of course, it helps us all to help others. For example, last time I mentioned a post with the long title of, deep breath, Blog Tutorial 6 of 10: Design and Layout - Google ads? Affiliate Programs? Links to other sites and blogs? In return they have written a nice post recommending this blog. You can read it here.

Blogs such as Blog About Your Blog, The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under, Kumiko's Cash Quest and many others are spreading a little 'link love'. To my way of thinking this is much more beneficial and worthwhile than a long list of meaningless links like the z-list.

Anyway, lets get on with it!

5 Ways To Lose Blog Readers.
When I saw this title I thought, "But I don't want to lose any readers." Of course what Matt is actually writing about is how to prevent losing readers. One way is by not writing too many sponsored posts, for example. Well that's what Matt reckons and he seems a bright lad as he's studying for his A levels in Cambridge, UK.

Making Money With adSense And Other Ad Programs.
This is a post from Irwin in Canada. The following thought of his seems good advice: 'Most people pay too much attention on earning from their blog/website and less on adding value ... priority should be given on providing value for your site visitors.' Food for thought?

Is Your Blog Banned In China?
This post is from the satirical blog, The Pisstakers, which is banned in China. Ed can't see why and writes: 'We always eat our bean sprouts and never insult the little yellow guy at the Foo Yong Ying takeaway.' As you can probably see this isn't one for the PC brigade! There is a link on the post so you can check if your blog is on the banned list.

Monetize Your Blog With Chitika eMiniMalls.
Chitika isn't something I've tried out but I often see it mentioned when reading various blogs. Here's some info on this potential money making program from Daryl, that's his photo on the right. I wish more bloggers would post photos on their blogs.

Sponsored Reviews.
So what's this all about? Erm, Sponsored Reviews! You've not doubt heard about PayPerPost, Review Me and so on, well Sponsored Reviews are the new kid on the block. Tom gives us the low down and the necessary link if you think this may interest you.

That's the lot for this week.

Good luck,
Mike.


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